Women and Feminism: Progressive America

On May 9, 1908, the US Senate rejected a bill that would have established Mother's Day as a national holiday on the grounds that motherhood was too sacred to be demeaned by a day in its honor.

Just 11 years later, in 1919, the Senate passed the

19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, women activists and their male allies were preaching a new day for women.

What was the relationship between the suffrage movement and other feminist campaigns?Why did the women's movement lose momentum after women got the vote?

"All feminists are suffragists,

but not all suffragists are feminists"

"Cult of True Womanhood"

In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still held sway in American society, at least among members of the middle and upper classes.

Strict, hierarchical Victorian thought promoted a so-called "cult of true Womanhood," which preached four cardinal virtues for women:

Piety…

Advocates believed that women were far more religious and spiritual in nature than men.

Purity…

America's women were supposed to be pure of heart, mind, and of course, body.

Submission…

Women were supposed to live in a kind of perpetual childhood, passively responding to the actions and decisions of men.

Domesticity…

The Industrial Revolution had created a clear division between the public sphere of work and the private sphere of home. Home and hearth, according to the Cult of True Womanhood, became the domain of woman.

Three areas alarmed members of Victorian-era America:

* Dress Reform * Education of Women * Women in the Workforce

Dress reform:

In 1850, in reaction to the cost and physical restrictiveness of Victorian dress, with its bustles and corsets, Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Cady Stanton designed a simple dress that women could wear over "bloomers," which were ankle-length pantaloons.

Education of Women:

Many nineteenth-century physicians accepted Darwinism, concluded that women had stopped evolving sooner than men, and, therefore, were less developed mentally and less suited for education.

One physician of the day stated, "Woman has a head almost too small for intellect, but just big enough for love."

Students at work in University of Wisconsin "home economics laboratory"

Women Entering the Workforce:

Immigrant women and poor women had no choice but to work as laundresses, servants, and factory help.

Proponents of True Womanhood, however, often demonized women forced to work outside the home.

They argued that working outside the home would give women financial independence from their fathers and husbands and, in turn, undermine the family.

Not everyone went along passively with this the stifling conventions of true womanhood.

Well before the Civil War, women began laying the foundation for the modern women's rights movement.

As early as the 1820s, for example, women were active in broad "humanist" movements such as abolition, war relief efforts, and the temperance movement.

Although not focused directly on women's issues, these campaigns allowed women the opportunity to hone the skills required to organize and protest for suffrage and more expansive rights.

The Women's Rights Movement

The Seneca Falls Convention…

organized in 1848by Quakers Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was the first public gathering in the U.S. to address the rights of women.

One result of the convention was the "Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments."

Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, the "Declaration of Sentiments" indicted American society for keeping women from voting, from owning property, and from having equal access to education and employment.

Nearly 240 people attended the meeting, including such intellectual

as Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.

Encouraged by this first meeting, the new “women's rights movement”held annual conventions through the 1850s.

Many women campaigned for the abolition of slavery, hoping that new political rights for oppressed African-Americans would translate into greater rights for women.

The Fifteenth Amendment…

which gave the vote to black men, but not to women, was one point of debate which caused a split in the women's movement.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony was the more radical woman's suffrage group.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), suffrage leader

Stanton and Anthony…

It accepted only women and opposed the Fifteenth Amendment since it only enfranchised African-American men. The NWSA criticized American society, claiming that focus on the family was the real source of women's inequality in society.

Stanton and Anthony argued that marriage, as it existed, was set up to gratify men and to disempower women.

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was more moderate in its views than the NWSA.

It allowed men to join and rallied behind the Fifteenth Amendment as a step in the right direction toward greater civil rights for women. Leaders of the AWSA included Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone.

Julia Ward Howe Lucy Stone

Another one of the most outspoken and flamboyant women's rights activists of the day was Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927).

At various times she dabbled in spiritualism, ran a successful brokerage firm, published a newspaper with Marxist leanings, and in 1870, became the first woman to declare herself a candidate for President in 1872.

Anthony and Stanton thought that Woodhull would be an ideal speaker at the 1871 NWSA convention.

They got more than they had bargained

for, however, when Woodhull made a ringing

speech calling for the overthrow

of the U.S. government.

Stated Woodhull, "We mean treasonWe are plotting revolution."

Stanton and Anthony eventually disavowed Woodhull but the associations connection to such radical thought, in fact, severely damaged the organization.

Three main feminist movements: 1870s-1919

From the 1870s until WWI, many feminists became more conservative in their views and goals. They were divided into three major groups of reformers:

1. The Suffragists

After 1870, suffragistsfocused on winning for women the right to vote.

Their arguments were slightly different than those of suffragists before the Civil War.

Early reformers had argued that women, as human-beings, had a natural right to vote.

From the 1870s on, however, suffragists took their cues from the Cult of True Womanhood and argued that women were different and, in some cases, better than men.

Women, for example, were more spiritual than men.

Granting women the right to vote, they argued, would help purify political corruption in the US.

2. The Social Feminists

Social feminists agreed with the suffragists that women should get the vote, but dedicated themselves to social reforms other than suffrage.

Prominent social feminists were often leaders of the settlement movement, such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley.

Jane Addams

Florence Kelly

Part of that generation of women who first gained access to higher education, Kelley graduated from Cornell University. However, like manywomen of her time, she had difficulty finding work that was worth her talents.

She served as the head of the National Consumers' League (NCL), a lobbying group for the rights of working women and children.

Addams’ work at Hull House was an extension of the Social Reforms advocated by women’s rights at the turn of the century.

There were a host of other reform organizations headed by women: Woman's Trade Union League, National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Council of Colored Women.

These groups saw government as a potentially beneficial agent of social welfare.

The new generation of social feminists were more pragmatic.

In 1890, these new feminists reunited the squabbling AWSA and NWSA and formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

The NAWSA was led by Carrie Chapman Catt.

Catt, a close colleague of Susan B. Anthony, believed it was a woman's natural right to participate in politics, and also wanted women to have the vote in order to reform society.

Catt reasoned that if women had political power…

…they could not only improve life for themselves and for their children, but have influence over more global issues such as world peace.

To this end, Catt founded the League of Women Voters in 1920.

3. The Radical Feminists

Radical feminists offered a much stronger critique of American society, economics, and politics.

The most prominent radical feminist was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935),

a sociologist and self-proclaimed socialist.

In 1898, Gilman achieved international fame with her book, Women and Economics, a condemnation of the Cult of True Womanhood.

Her chief arguments in the book were quite radical for America at the turn of the century.

She argued that social environment, not biology, determined the roles of

men and women.

Alice Paul, who organized the Woman's Party in the 1910s…

…and introduced the first Equal Rights Amendment in 1916, represented the other facet of radical feminism.

The campaign for the ERA during the 1910s was so radical that most social feminists rejected it out of fear that the proposed constitutional amendment would endanger protective legislation for women.

As a result, the campaign for the ERA remained a minority movement within feminism.

The Nineteenth Amendment

In addition to the ERA, another point of division among various feminist groups was World War I.

Jane Addams and other social feminists were vocal pacifists who opposed Wilson's decision to enter the war.

Hard-core suffragists, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, endorsed Wilson's decision, with the understanding that Wilson would support women's suffrage at war's end.

After the war came to a close, Wilson urged Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which it did. The states ratified itin 1920.

After decades of struggle, women had finally won the vote.

Feminism in the 1920s

In the 1920s, the women's rights movement died down.

This was due, in part, to the achievement of the goal of suffrage, but also because of a general retreat from activism in post-WWI America.

Feminists of the time made three discoveries:

Women did not vote as a bloc. Younger women were less interested in reform and more interested in rebelling against social conventions.

They were enjoying new economic and sexual freedoms in the prosperous years that immediately followed World War I.

To put it simply, the daughters of the early feminists were more interested in smoking, drinking, going without corsets, bobbing their hair, reading daring literature…

…and dancing the Charleston.

Women and Feminism: Progressive America

Women and Feminism: Progressive America

Created for Edmond Public Schools